IHS
Twenty-Fourth
Sunday after Pentecost (6th after Epiphany)—15 November AD 2020
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Ordinary of the
Mass
English Mass
Text
Latin Mass Text
“The Kingdom of Heaven
is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour,
until the whole was leavened.”
Many of us take for granted the
bread which sits upon our tables. But at the time our Lord was
speaking, just about everyone knew how bread was made, because they had
baked it themselves; it was not just something that came off the shelf
in a plastic wrapper. And our Lord told them that the Kingdom of Heaven
is similar to this process called “leavening,” that they had all seen
many times.
If you bake flour and water without
any leaven you get a flat, hard cracker. But if you take a just bit of
leaven, or “yeast” as we usually call it, and mix it thoroughly with the
flour, the leaven becomes part of the dough—“hidden” to use our Lord's
expression. And if you cover it and leave it alone for a while, when
you come back you will find that the dough is permeated with the little
bubbles that give bread its spongy consistency when baked. And, if you
are working with a hardy strain of leaven, you can leaven the next batch
of dough just by saving a little from the current batch before baking
it.
Now, among the Jews, this process of
leavening might have two meanings: It might be taken either as a symbol
of life, as the rising bread seems to be coming to life out of lifeless
flour; or it might be taken as a symbol of corruption, with something
bad spreading its evil throughout its surroundings. The Jewish people
were sometimes directed to offer sacrifices with leaven; these seem to
be on the more happy and festive days. On the more penitential days
they were directed to offer sacrifice without leaven; and on these days
there was something of a fear that some small particle of leaven would
get into the baking and “corrupt” their unleavened bread.
This same sort of symbolism is
useful to us in modern times, so that we too can understand the nature
of the Kingdom of Heaven.
To begin with, we might think of our
redemption as the most important “leavening” — the “leavening” of the
entire human race—which took place when Almighty God “hid” Himself in
the mass of human kind by taking human flesh of the Virgin Mary and
becoming one of us. This great mystery, which we call the “Incarnation”
renewed the spiritual dignity of fallen mankind; allowing us “to become
partakers of His divinity, who humbled Himself to partake of our
humanity.”
In this great leavening, Christ permeates the human race, giving life to
what had been spiritually dead through the sin of Adam. But just like
the baker who must properly knead the dough and cover it and let it rise
and bake it at the right temperature, it still remains up to us to
absorb that leaven and make proper use of it; to live a life filled with
faith, hope, and charity.
In today's Gospel, our Lord seems to
be talking about a second generation of “leavening”—for just as He
communicates the life of God to us, we must communicate it to those
around us who do not know him. In that sense, we are talking about the
good influence that we can have on all of those with whom we come into
contact, just by living good and holy lives. Even if we as individuals
seem small and insignificant, if we persevere in the practice of our
faith we can have a very great and good “leavening” effect on the
masses.
But, there is also a caution given
to us by our Lord. He tells us to “beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees.”
For just as we can have a powerful good effect on others, there is also
the danger of corruption; that we might be leavened in reverse by the
powers of the world. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is
hypocrisy” … beware “of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the
Sadducees.” So our Lord is telling us that we must be continually on
guard against those who are in positions of authority (as the Pharisees
were), yet who would lead us astray with the leaven of false doctrine.
Just as our spiritual life begins with Faith, belief in the things of
Christ; so too that Faith can be destroyed by the allurements of error.
And he is telling us as well to
avoid the very dangerous trap of hypocrisy: of trying to appear to be
something that we are not; of trying to seem holy, yet not bothering to
be holy. For that sort of superficial “holiness” does no
one any good, and may indeed lead to the downfall of many. For both
hypocrisy and false doctrine are very powerful corruptors, against which
we must always be vigilant.
Saint Paul adopted this same
metaphor of “corruption” when he wrote to the Corinthians. He told them
to purge out the “old … leaven of malice and wickedness,” replacing it
with “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
So “the Kingdom of Heaven is like
leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until the
whole was leavened.” We must always be wary not to receive that
foreign strain of leaven that comes from the devil; the corruption of
false doctrine and hypocrisy. We have been given the leaven of
redemption and the sanctifying grace of Jesus; we can, indeed, be the
leaven of the society around us, making it good by being good ourselves.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like
leaven.” The only way to keep out the leaven of malice is to fill our
souls with the leaven of Jesus Christ.
